Except practically all politicians speak / spin things differently for different audiences. Further most politicians also understand that there is a lot of horsetrading when it comes to getting things done. Even Bernie Sanders has done so on issues of guns and the 1994 crime bill which he criticized Clinton for even though he voted for it.
This idea that Clinton has stood for nothing and is completely bought and sold belies that through her history she has consistently stood for improving health care especially for children, raising wages for women and the environment. For all the money she has made in speaking fees we can consider all the money spent by health insurance and other interest groups against her from the 90's on. I won't deny Clinton has flaws and making massive speaking fees from Wall Street is one of them. That said not standing for anything is definately not one of them.
Also I find it yet another hypocrisy for those who support Trump to criticize Clinton over these speeches. Trump has argued that he is smart for taking advantage of the tax code and that his wealth is an asset to being president. If so how can they then turn around and criticize Clinton for taking advantage of a good business opportunity to enrich herself.
Of course its speculation. If there was proof, she would be in jail. I did not single out Clinton. I specifically stated that any politician using a form of pay to play is wrong. I also said there is nothing wrong with a person, whether its an athlete or politician, to give speeches if they genuinely cared and there was no unethical behavior going on. However making millions of dollars off wall street and special interests groups while still in politics is wrong, even if its legal. Just is as not paying taxes for 20 years is legal, but wrong.
People generally do not have a problem when people engage in free market to make money. There is a difference between being greedy and being unethical. It is unethical to use the political machine to make wealth...specifically stating pay-to-play. I do find it unethical to resign from SOS, spend two years campaigning, raising millions of personal dollars directly from special interest groups and then turn around and run for president. If a person, whether its Hillary, Trump, Cheney or anyone else, wants to make millions of dollars from speeches and books or other business ventures, they should resign from politics permanently. I honestly don't give a **** if someone finds a legal way not to pay taxes, or sticks a cigar up their interns vagina, or whether the SOS botched Bengazi. What I do care about is shitty policies that lead to recessions, bubbles and generally poor legislation that screws over the Americans.
Hell yeah. Good thing 20 or so years of Republican House control pre-OC reformed the healthcare system so that it wouldn't be insolvent and leave millions near death or in life crushing debt. This is willful ignorance devoid of political context and is tantamount to a derail like one of those stupid lazy cows on an Indian expressway. Quit pretending the tea party and shills like Ted Cruz doesn't exist. These last 6 years have practically been those ****tards taking the government hostage and would've been much worse had Trump not out teabag them and double down on their inflammatory themes. The Republican party had been obstructionist through their actions such as being responsible for the last two government shutdowns and the only party threatening shutdowns for the last twenty five years rather than doing their jobs, "voting their conscience" and putting a yes or no in record. Man up. Own it, and quit compartmentalizing your arbitrary conservative ideals away from the Predominant American Conservative Party. Empty counterfactual claims without substance isn't interesting nor debate. Trump does the 250k speech circuit too. Expenses everything he can to his holdings to boot. Elephants masquerading as ostriches is the intellectual low point of Conservatism in the post-Buckley era.
Isn't greed by definition unethical? As for the second point in bold that's a rather anti-capitalist stance to take. These people aren't doing anything unethical by giving a speech to share their opinion on something nor by writing a book where people purchase it with their own money. I mean that would eliminate the GOPs second best option in Ted Cruz whose wife works for a branch of Goldman Sachs and made a good portion of his wealth from his law practice and politics. What bubbles specifically do you fear looming in the future from poor legislation done by Hillary and Congress that have yet to burst? Wouldn't you consider even having a legal way to not pay taxes a form of poor legislation that screws over Americans? If so, who do you blame for loopholes in tax codes specifically? Of the Presidential candidates available which ones do you think will be able to get Congress to pass legislation that will ultimately be beneficial to most Americans or at the very least screw up the country the least? What are your solutions and who do you think that's available even by the 2020 election that could fix it?
But when a person expresses a willingness to express one thing publicly and do and express different things privately, it makes people not be able to trust what they are being told by the politician. If that is true of most politicians it doesn't make it less so for Hillary. The fact that other politicians have done it, doesn't make it okay to hold it against a politician who is the representative of one of the two major parties, and is running for the top office in the nation. I'm not sure how Bernie has done that on the issue of guns. Being against some measures of gun control, and still liking the idea of more reasonable gun control measures. I'm asking because I'm familiar of Bernie's stance on guns in only a general way, and not specifics on how he's stated one thing publicly and voted or said he felt a different way privately. There is also a possibility to have one belief in a person's private life and believe that those personal beliefs shouldn't necessarily be law. So Hillary is on record as having lied about the email stuff and how she handled that, she's on record as lying about her record on same sex marriage, etc. She has the reputation of being dishonest. This re-enforces that idea.
So I assume you're against super-PACs and corporations and special interest groups being able to contribute money to campaigns? Or is it OK to pay-to-play there? And why weren't you similarly upset in 2012 over Romney's speaking fees? Since we're just speculating and don't need proof these days to just make absolute accusations, I think it's extremely sexist that you want to deny Hillary Clinton the opportunity to use the free market because she's a woman. It's says quite a bit about you.
You know, I read what the OP posted (maybe there is more elsewhere) and what I see is she saying there is a public and private position without specifics. And without specific, it could be a slight spin to outright lies. I don't know. But her mention of "balance" lead me to believe it's not on the side of an outright lie. What I believe is given an environment of news and catchy titles, where anything you said can be and will be used against you by your opponents, where perception is king and reality is only for a slim % of folks that pay really close attention, how can you not have "public" position that "shape perception" and influence people and survive? I think It is absolutely necessary in politic to have a public position that may be different from your real position to further your agenda and goals. And I think that has been the case since... forever in history of politic.
So these excerpts come from Clinton campaign emails that were intercepted and leaked, right? I thought, how dumb does the Clinton campaign have to be to gather up all the worst passages of her speeches and put them in a convenient document somewhere that they can be hacked and leaked? So my conspiracy theory is this: they did it on purpose, picking passages that are maybe a bit off-message, but not terrible and too nuanced for people to get anyway, and served that up on a silver platter for some hacker to leak. Then, when they eventually hit the news, it'd go over like a lead balloon and no one would suspect all the other, terrible things she also said in those speeches that were not served up to be leaked.
Wow, those excerpts are not damning at all. I expected something there. Interesting possibility about Kaine and Bill. . . . If true, I would interpret both moves as trying to have it both ways by acting Trumpy, but not by Hillary herself. Kaine (who seemed way out of character) does the rude aggressive schtick to appeal to the grouchy Trumpy white males; Bill attacks Obamacare like the Trumpers; but Hillary is not guilty of any of it: Hillary camp does the Trump act, while Hillary takes no blame.
